Word: forests
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...Earlier this week, I described the views of Idaho loggers, including foresters for Boise Cascade, who believe fervently- - even scathingly - that thinning the forests by logging is absolutely essential in order to prevent the sort of wildfires now blazing all over the West. Essentially: You have to cut the forests in order to save them. The Forest Service itself has often made this argument in the past...
...controversy. It takes on urgency in view of the devastating fires and of Bill Clinton's roadless lands initiative, an all-but-done deal to ban further road-building on 43 million acres of national forest - Clinton's bid to be remembered as the greatest conservationist president since... Teddy Roosevelt...
...Here is one side of the controversy that plan has generated: Loggers like Galen Hamilton are outraged. They think that the forest fires now burning up the West are connected to policies like the roadless initiative, to what might be called the sentimental neglect of forests - the failure to manage them properly, to thin the woods, clear the deadfall, and diminish the dense fuel that burns apocalyptically hot when fire does come...
...This is the worst time NOT to manage our forests," says Galen Hamilton. "Management" (according to the loggers, anyway) means intelligent logging, culling out dead and dying trees and always regenerating the forest, a process that can be accomplished within 12 or 15 years. It means, they say, attacking bark beetle and spruce budworm and other diseases. It means prescribed - that is, carefully controlled - burns to clear off choking, potentially hot-burning undergrowth...
...Foresters at Boise Cascade in Horseshoe Bend state the case with scientific elaboration. The argument is self-serving, but not necessarily wrong. Dave Van De Graaff, who oversees 195,000 acres as region timberlands manager for Boise Cascade, gives an hour's dissertation on the hazards of mismanaged forest, and argues, "By saying you cannot build roads, they are saying, Let it burn. A lot of the West has too much fuel. It'll burn. We believe the industry is not the problem but a big part of the solution...